In a major blow to San Diego’s cruise ship business, Carnival Cruise Lines has announced that it will be pulling the last of its ships out of the area after April 2012 and relocating the 2,500-passenger vessel to Australia.

The ship’s departure will have a huge economic impact, depriving the region of roughly $54 million in spending, estimates the Port of San Diego. The 88,500-ton Carnival Spirit typically makes 27 calls in San Diego each year, carrying more than 60,000 passengers annually to destinations in the Mexican Riviera.

At its peak, in 2008, the Port of San Diego saw 255 ships dock at the Embarcadero, but that number is expected to fall to 103 this year. By 2013, the number of cruise ship calls could be as few as 76.

“Our decision to deploy the Carnival Spirit to Australia was based on the weaker relative financial performance for our San Diego program at present,” said Carnival spokesman Vance Gulliksen. “Only about 1.5 percent of Australians have ever taken a cruise, meaning that there is huge potential for growth.”

The slumping economy and diminished interest in travel to Mexico because of continued violence there is clearly to blame for the plunge in San Diego’s cruise business, which is expected to sink to its lowest level in a decade.

While an estimated 515,000 passengers boarded and disembarked from ships in San Diego in 2010, just half that many are expected to do so this year.

Carnival has indicated it will consider basing another ship in San Diego in the future based on market conditions and “our very strong relationship with the Port of San Diego,” but it would not be pinned down on when that could happen. Last spring, Carnival relocated San Diego’s only year-round ship, the Elation, to Mobile, Ala.

San Diego Port Marketing Director Rita Vandergaw acknowledged the economic toll Carnival’s latest decision will have on the region. She pointed to a 2005 study conducted by the Port District, which found that each ship beginning and ending a cruise in San Diego contributed $2 million to the economy. About one-third of that is money spent by the cruise lines themselves on such things as labor, ship repairs, shore excursions, florists and provisions.

“The cruise lines have floating assets that they can deploy globally, and we have a very challenging economic situation in the state of California that is compounded by the situation in Mexico,” Vandergaw said. “We also have regulatory and environmental requirements that add significant costs to the cruise lines.

“Although this is a blow, and we’re really saddened by the loss of this business, we still have opportunities for people to cruise from San Diego on other lines.”

She noted that Holland America, which is owned by Carnival Cruise Lines’ parent company, Carnival Corp., is still San Diego’s principal cruise line, operating the largest number of liners in and out of the port. Its ships sail to a number of destinations, including Mexico, Hawaii, the Panama Canal and South America.

Other cruise lines that occasionally visit San Diego include Celebrity, Seabourn, Crystal and Royal Caribbean.

Carnival’s announcement comes on the heels of the San Diego Port’s recent completion of a new $28 million cruise ship terminal at the Broadway Pier that was designed to accommodate overflow business from its larger terminal at B Street.

Cruise lines, including Carnival, have complained about the Port’s aging facility at B Street and its inability to process a large number of passengers when multiple ships are in port.

Carnival Corp. originally agreed to lend the Port funds to help improve the B Street Terminal. However, in 2007, at the request of the Port District, it agreed to boost the loan amount to $12 million, most of which went toward the Broadway terminal project. The loan is being repaid through a special fee of $4 levied on each passenger.

Gulliksen pointed out that Carnival’s loan was made well before the economic downturn and the uptick in violence in Mexico and that the cruise line’s sister company, Holland America, continues to operate seasonally in San Diego.

Vandergaw defended the Port District’s decision to build the Broadway terminal, pointing out that there will be times when there are not enough berths at the B Street Terminal to accommodate more than one large ship. She added that it is still the Port’s intention to substantially uprade the B Street terminal, and the Broadway facility would be needed to serve ships while such a project is under construction.

“The decision was right to build a cruise facility for a number of reasons,” she said. “We needed to build this facility to move forward with B Street, which is under par, and the cruise business will return.

“My experience with the cruise lines is things change very rapidly, and every six months they make itinerary changes for 18 months out. So we are going to step up our marketing and sales and do everything we can to make sure that when they’re ready to bring a ship back to the West Coast, we’re first in line.”